Faded Hotels, Swizzle Sticks, Gilbert & George: Hot Art

In “The Good Days,” his second solo show at Acquavella
Galleries, the New York-based artist revisits modern
architecture of his native San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Perez is known for giving landmark buildings the iconic
treatment Andy Warhol reserved for celebrities. He started about
a decade ago, with buildings whose history and names --
Normandie, El Miramar, La Concha -- alluded to his country’s
colonial past.

Back then, seductively textured images were crisp and
easily identifiable. The new paintings are a lot more abstract.
Densely layered oil paint obliterates the buildings’ solid
structure, leaving behind only ghostly silhouettes. Perez’s
former tropical palette has given way to pastels.

The show also introduces Perez’s first sculptures, inspired
by his collection of swizzle sticks, many from the hotels he
paints. The tiny trivia are cast on a much larger scale -- one
piece is more than 6 feet tall.

The lanky, knobby formations -- some bronze, others plaster
-- also look abstract and figurative at once, alluding to
Giacometti and Twombly.

Prices range from $180,000 to $250,000 for paintings and
$30,000 to $75,000 for sculptures. The show runs through Feb. 9
at 18 E. 79th St. +1-212-734-6300;
http://www.acquavellagalleries.com/.

Small and Meticulous

At Hauser & Wirth, Anj Smith’s paintings are unusual for a
contemporary art show: Small and meticulous, some evoke the past
and share features with Renaissance portraits.

“The Moon, Like a Flower” depicts a girl in profile with
blond hair and pale skin, reminiscent of Botticelli’s Venus. In
“High Blue Country,” a red-haired girl with a melancholy look
is set on a black background, her head bent to one side.

As you get closer, unexpected details appear, transporting
the viewer from the appearance of early portraiture to what
could be the illustration of an enchanted children’s tale.

In “High Blue Country,” thin branches grow from the
girl’s chest and green leaves from her hair. Insects wander
around her shoulder. In “Portrait of a Girl in Glass,” a
monkey with a striped tail is camouflaged in the girl’s shirt.

Text Art

The Madison Avenue building housing Gagosian Gallery is now
the temporary home of a show co-curated by Vladimir Restoin
Roitfeld, son of former Vogue Paris Editor-in-Chief Carine
Roitfeld, and Christine Messineo, director of Chelsea’s
Bortolami Gallery.

“Merci Mercy,” titled after a 1999 Louise Bourgeois wall
relief, brings together more than 40 works that revolve around
text. The lineup includes emerging and established names,
including Pier Paolo Calzolari, Tracey Emin, Tom Sachs and Ed Ruscha.

Jenny Holzer, famous for her bright LED signs, makes a
subtler use of words in her oils on linen on view in the show.
She screened on canvases some American governmental documents
and then painted over them, leaving just a few barely visible
words like “Top Secret.”

Tarot Cards

On the opposite end of the room, the curators placed
Gilbert & George’s 2011 panel “Lover” next to a work by Sophie
Calle in which the artist shows four tarot cards meant to
interpret a letter in which her boyfriend breaks up with her.

“We thought it was funny to play around with the Gilbert &
George painting, in which lovers are being accused, judged,
killed,” Roitfeld said. “There was an interesting theme going
on between the two pieces.”

Prices range from $5,000 to $900,000. The show runs through
Feb. 17 at 980 Madison Ave. Information: +1-212-228-5555.

(Katya Kazakina and Lili Rosboch write for Muse, the arts
and leisure section of Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are
their own.)